In an apparent move to reduce tensions with Washington, Pakistani authorities agreed to allow the CIA to send a forensic team to scour the former hideout of Osama bin Laden for new clues, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

The CIA forensic team will look for additional clues in the Bin Laden compound in AbbottabadPhoto: AP

11:22PM BST 26 May 2011

The official, who asked for anonymity while discussing sensitive information, said that there was no guarantee the team of CIA experts would find anything during their searches.

The official noted that Pakistani investigators have been conducting their own investigation of the compound in the weeks since bin Laden was killed during a May 2 raid by U.S. Navy SEALs.

After killing bin Laden and some members of his entourage, the U.S. commandos gathered up what officials have described as a massive trove of evidence, including electronic data storage media, and took it with them when they left the compound with the al Qaeda leader's body.

A team of intelligence experts assembled by the CIA is poring over the cache, looking for clues about al Qaeda personnel, finances and possible plans or current operations.

The CIA forensic team will look for additional clues – for example, evidence hidden in walls or buried under floors or elsewhere in the compound. The official declined to disclose when the team would depart.

Relations between Washington and Islamabad hit a new low in the wake of the SEAL raid of the compound near Pakistan's principal military academy. Tensions had been rising since the CIA's undercover station chief was outed by the Pakistani media late last year.

The U.S. official said that for the Pakistani government, granting a U.S. request for access for the CIA forensic team was a "low-cost option" to ease strains with the United States.

Allowing the team to go through the compound with microscopic precision "might seem to (Pakistani authorities) to be an easy card to play," the official said.

Earlier, Pakistani authorities allowed CIA representatives to have access to three of bin Laden's wives who were taken from his compound after the American attack. U.S. officials have said that the women have been uncooperative.

U.S. officials have said that an initial review of the materials which SEALs took from bin Laden's hideout revealed that bin Laden was more engaged with al Qaeda operations than western intelligence agencies had thought, and that he had been brainstorming various grandiose schemes to mount spectacular new mass-casualty attacks on the U.S. or American targets.

However, officials also say that so far, examinations of the seized materials have not revealed any specific or imminent threats against Western or American targets.